What's a Blog?



Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

To put it simply, a blog is nothing more then an online journal. In the wide world of blogging (refferred to as the 'blogosphere'), a blog entry is known as a post, the act of writing these entries is known as blogging, and the person doing the blogging is called a blogger. There are many advantages of a blog over other methods of journaling andI've tried to summarize the ones that are most meaningful for me.

 

For one, a blog can be updated via a number of different tools, and in a number of different forms. Blogs can be updated by the blogger through email, SMS, and even Twitter. the blogger could even send a photo from their phone if they wanted to. And while speaking of photos, any kind of internet information is fair game for viewing on a blog - from text,  to images, to links (oh my!)


Another advantage of a blog are the posts themselves.  Posts are organized chronologically, but have advantages over a written form because they can be searched either through a tool bar (like how you might search for something via Google) or through labels, which are keywords that the blogger has categorized their posts by. So for example, I might have several labels for my blog - diabetes, humor, sports, relationships - and should you click on one of these labels you would see all posts that I have given this label to.


A last advantge of  a blog is the idea of interactivity. The only way a writer could keep in contact with his / her readers was to (that's right) write back and forth. Blogs have transformed information into a conversation, with almost anyone able to read a blog and comment on it. Through comments and social tagging, posts have the ability to spread around the web and give many the ability to communicate.